Although at one time, William Saroyan's 1939 comedy/drama The Time of
Your Life was as inescapable a staple of theatre as such contemporaries
Our Town, Arsenic and Old Lace, or Life With Father,
the play has eluded my viewing until now. By happy chance director Tina
Landau's rich production at the Seattle Repertory Theatre (based on and
largely starring the cast from the well received 2002 production by
Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre) is as grand an introduction to this rather
unwieldy but undeniably entertaining piece of Americana as one could
wish.

Set in 1939, as the wind's of the war in Europe are about to blow the
United States into WWII, The Time of Your Life takes place primarily
inside Nick's Saloon on the San Francisco waterfront, but
GW Mercier's expansive and jaw droppingly impressive scenic design is just
as concerned with what's taking place just outside the play's primary
action. We get to see inside a whorehouse, longshoremen on strike, street
musicians, an overhead bridge and more, all of which enhances rather than
distracts from the character interaction inside Nick's. There, as in Vicki
Baum's Grand Hotel, people come, people go, and nothing ever happens,
in terms of conventional plotting. But Saroyan filled his play with a
fascinating
assemblage of track stars in the human race, and Landau, through crisp
pacing, period musical interludes and overlapping dialogue, keeps us riveted
to them for two and one half hours.

Jeff Perry dominates the action as Joe, a likable yet vaguely disturbing
barfly who has the money to keep buying champagne and putting misbegotten
floozies up in fancy hotels, though by what means we never really learn.
Patrick New is utterly engaging as Tom, Joe's good-natured and largely
unquestioning errand boy, who falls hard for Kitty, a burlesque doll turned
hooker, played with a little too much posturing by Mariann Mayberry. The
liveliest figures on the stage are an outstanding Howard Witt as a tale-spinning Old West style vagabond who goes by the name of Kit Carson, and the utterly
engaging Guy Adkins as Harry, a wannabe song and dance man. Adkins, in a
role that helped send Gene Kelly on his way to Hollywood, struts his stuff
sometimes in the forefront of the action (as in a charmingly zany rendition
of "I Won't Dance" partnered with Darragh Kennan's lovably lovelorn Dudley)
and sometimes in the background to help make a point, accompanied at the
piano and vocals by Don Shell as a hard-luck black musician. Yasen Peyankov
is a study in riveting understatement as barkeep Nick. Rod Knapp is a
perfect fit as a gnarly old drunk, and Ramiz Monsef is hilarious as Willie,
a pinball wizard who finally hits it big.

Familiar Seattle faces scoring in glorified cameos include Suzanne
Bouchard as Mary L., a dignified lady who shares a touching romantic
interlude with Perry's Joe; Cynthia Jones, touching as the kindly Lorene who
accepts a blind date with Dudley only to be turned away; and Dan Kremer and
Lori Larsen, humorously boorish as a wealthy couple slumming for the night
at Nick's. Lawrence MacGowan is saddled with the only utterly unlikable
role in the play as a corrupt and nasty vice cop named Blick, and can't do
much other than make himself so contemptibly villainous as possible, so that
his predictable demise engenders complete support from the audience.

The use of music in this production is a major key to its success. When
a small paperboy (played with raffishly earnest abandon by Elias James
Higham) "auditions" to sing in the bar with the old standard "When Irish
Eyes Are Smiling" the audience breaks into the kind of mid-show applause
that you almost never here anymore, at certainly not in a straight play. This and
wistful strains of "Beautiful Dreamer," "I'll Be Seeing You" and other
vintage tunes employed as underscoring are mightily effective. The closing
moments when the whole company breaks the fourth wall for an ironic rendition
of "Let's Face the Music and Dance" may strike some as cornball, but with
corn as sweet as what's onstage in The Time of Your Life, what's to
complain about?

The Time of Your Life runs through March 7 at Seattle Repertory
Theatre's Bagley Wright Auditorium. For further information visit the Rep
on-line at www.seattlerep.org.